Ryan Potter provides the voice of Hiro Hamada, a young genius-turned-superhero in Disney’s latest animated film “Big Hero 6.†The 19-year-old Potter, whose father is Japanese and mother is Caucasian, plays what he describes as the first biracial main protagonist of a Disney film. Born in Portland, Ore., Potter moved to Tokyo a few months after […]
Nikkei teen, said to be Disney’s first biracial lead character, stars in ‘Big Hero 6’
November 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Postwar adoptees from Japan make connections, share stories in U.S.
November 20, 2014 by 2 Comments
LOS ANGELES — Kei LaFleur has a story behind the name she grew up with, and she said that story has given her much to be thankful for. Born in the fall of 1954 to, she believes, a Japanese mother and American father, she was named Keiko and put in the care of the Elizabeth […]
A Match for Bay: Eight-year-old Nikkei battles leukemia
July 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment
While most children play outside this summer, 8-year-old Baylor “Bay†Nihei Fredrickson from Albany, Calif engages in Nerf gun battles with nurses in between chemotherapy rounds. Baylor, who is of Japanese and German descent, was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in February 2012 at 5 years old. According to his mother, Shari Nihei Fredrickson, Baylor […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The life and writings of hapa poet Ambrose Amadeus Uchiyamada
September 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This week’s column traces some of the history of a hapa poet and journalist with the magnificent name Ambrose Amadeus Uchiyamada, who grew up under rather unusual circumstances. His father Thomas Morkiyo Uchiyamada, a university-trained engineer from Japan who came to the United States for further schooling in the first years of the 20th century, […]
A lesson in embracing one’s identity
July 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Favorite Daughter Written and illustrated by Allen Say (New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013, $17.99, 32 pp., hardcover) I love Allen Say. This book, with its watercolor illustrations, has a gentle quality that makes me want to sit right down in a quiet corner to savor it. In Say’s latest book, “The Favorite […]
A comprehensive and complex look at multiethnic Asian American identities
January 1, 2013 by 1 Comment
WHEN HALF IS WHOLE: MULTIETHNIC ASIAN AMERICAN IDENTITIES By Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012, 248 pp., $21.95, paperback) The whole spectrum of the mixed race, multiethnic Asian American experience could never be contained in a single book. That said, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu’s new book, “When Half is Whole,†comes pretty close (without […]
Parents of multiracial youth sought as survey participants
July 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Susan Lambe Sariñana, a doctoral candidate at University of Massachusetts Boston’s Clinical Psychology program, is conducting a study on parenting multiracial youth (ages 3 to 22), and is searching for participants. Survey respondents would be asked questions via an online questionnaire about their thoughts on race, ethnicity and culture, as well as questions about their […]
In Mixed Company: Multiracial academics, advocates and artists gather for Hapa Japan Conference
May 26, 2011 by 6 Comments
As a graduate student in UCLA’s psychology department during the late 1970s, Christine Iijima Hall absorbed scathing criticism about her dissertation. Fellow academics dismissed her project as “a ridiculous piece of research,†she said, and newspapers declined to publicize her need for study participants based on the belief that she was covering a “stupid topic.†[…]
Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley presents Hapa Japan Conference April 8-9
March 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
BERKELEY — The Center for Japanese Studies, along with the Hapa Japan Database Project and All Nippon Airways, will host the Hapa Japan Conference Friday and Saturday, April 8-9, featuring specialists in the study of mixed-race Japanese history, identity and representation. Topics range from the history of mixed-race Japanese in the 1500s, part-Japanese communities in […]
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No surprise racism lurked underneath U.C. Santa Barbara mass murderer’s rage
There was no surprise that in between U.C. Santa Barbara’s mass murderer Elliot Rodger’s warped, sick, and perverse harangues against women, he also laced in a generous dose of racist rage and stereotyping. “I passed by this restaurant and I saw this black guy chilling with 4 hot white girls. He didn’t even look good. […]